Organization of American States

The Organization of American States (OAS, or, as it is known in the three other official languages, OEA) is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States. Its members are the thirty-five independent states of the Americas. The notion of an international union in the New World was first put forward by Simón Bolívar who, at the 1826 Congress of Panama, proposed creating a league of American republics, with a common military, a mutual defense pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly. This meeting was attended by representatives of Gran Colombia (comprising the modern-day nations of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela), Peru, the United Provinces of Central America, and Mexico, but the...